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Celeste and I watched Ghost World on Friday night. I loved it. We had seen it before, about seven years ago, and I liked it so much then that I immediately bought the soundtrack album on Amazon, something I have done, like, just this once, for any movie, ever.
Ghost World looked about 95% new to me. I didn’t remember either of the girls, but I pretty much remembered the Steve Buscemi character. And the guy with the nunchucks. In a way, the movie is kind of about dorky guys, and it brought to my mind two ancient instances of my own dorkiness. I woke Saturday morning with troubling doubts about my customary wonderfulness.
The first incident I recalled was, I think, in an eighth-grade boys PE class in Lexington, Kentucky, early in the school year. We were outside, on an asphalt basketball court, thirty, forty boys in T-shirts and gym shorts, assembled in rows, about two arm-lengths apart, with the teacher, the coach, I don’t remember anymore his name or what he looked like, a white guy, a coach-looking guy, barking out cadences for calisthenics.
When we started on jumping jacks, “UP on ONE, DOWN on TWO,” or whatever it was, “START on ONE, UP on TWO,” maybe, whatever it was, we had gone, I guess, maybe ten, eleven jumps, and I could see I was doing it the exact opposite of everybody else, but I knew what I had heard, so I was all right with that, but then the coach hollered, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Everybody hold it! Fischer! Fischer, what are you doing, Fischer?” Imagine a Southern sheriff voice, if you can.
I said, “I am doing what you said, sir,” and I quoted him what I thought he had said.
“That, Fischer, is not what I said,” said the coach. “I said, ...,” and he said it again, whatever it was, and then he asked, “Fischer, did you suppose you were doing it right and everybody else here was doing it wrong?”
I told him the truth. “Yes, sir, that is what I thought.”
The coach showed a sour little smile and shook his head in disbelief before he hollered at the whole group again, “Okay, gentlemen, let us try it once more, jumping jacks! UP on ONE, DOWN on TWO! Ready, Fischer? Begin, ONE ...!” and I got it that time.
So, then. The other incident that the movie brought to my mind, happened, if I recall right, on July the Fourth, 1976, the Bicentennial of the United States of America. It happened somewhere between Los Angeles, California, and Big Bear Lake, I do believe, and maybe I shall tell it to you sometime, if you would like to hear me mildly embarrass myself once more, and if you can’t show me that I have already told it to you somewhere on the pages of this Web site or in one of my published-on-paper books. It’ll keep. The jumping jacks story is enough to make my point for now. But so I don’t forget to tell you the Fourth of July story someday, I am going to put up a picture of the motorcycle that features in the story. Please remind me if I do forget. Thank you for your kind attention. Southern sheriff. Remember that, too.
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